Dodgers Stadium, 1000 Elysian Park Ave.

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This aerial shot turns a banal urban landscape into an abstract geometric design. Ruscha captured the Dodgers Stadium and surrounding parking lot in Los Angeles early one Sunday morning in 1967 from a helicopter. From above the parking lot and stadium appear to be completely abandoned, with the parking areas covered in skid marks and oil stains that mark the traces of human presence. In 1999, Ed Ruscha selected 30 images from his artist book ‘Thirtyfour Parking Lots’ 1967/1999 and reprinted them as the print portfolio ‘Parking Lot Series’ 1967/1999 of which this image is one. He said, “over the years I began to appreciate print quality and see my photographs as not necessarily reproductions for a book, but as having their own life as silver gelatine prints.”

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Ed Ruscha (American, born 1937)

Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He grew up in Oklahoma and studied in Los Angeles. Ruscha's work is diverse and experimental. Since childhood he has been interested in commercial art, in the form of advertising, comic books and magazines. This led to his first paintings featuring words, produced in the late 1950s. Ruscha is equally known for his books of deadpan photographs, such as 'Twenty-six Gasoline Stations' of 1963 and volumes of banal photographs of buildings. In his work Ruscha aims to challenge accepted concepts of language and meaning, often by combining unrelated words and images.